Pride comes before a -wall- fall

Thank you Cheyenne and Judy for the kind comments on my wall. I was feeling pretty smug about it. Alas, a major malfunction this morning. When I tentatively kicked a stone that looked a bit "off", it promptly fell out! Leaving a big hole. Of course it had to be one of the lower level ones too. I hadn't set it with it's length into the wall, and it was kind of wedge shaped, so the weight of the other rocks above it squeezed it out. I'll have to do some dismantling and build it back up again if possible. Oh well, back to the drawing board.

One of those days today. It was raining, so, since Ken had chopped a bunch of wood and kindling for me I decided to fire up the wood cook stove and put a roast in the oven. It wasn't a very cold day, but I thought I'd just keep a small fire in there and cook it slow all afternoon. Boy, locust wood puts out a lot of heat! I managed to keep the oven at about 300 F but Josh and I were sweltering. We had all the windows open. The kitten thought he was on the Costa del Sol. Instead of tearing up the couch cushions and curtains he spent the whole day spread out on the rug, stretching and rolling around on his back with his little paws in the air, blinking and yawning. The beef came out tough as old boots. Ken thought it was great and had two helpings but I couldn't eat it. Joshua cooked himself a store bought pizza.

We're going to have a slew of doctor bills this month.

Ken had to go to the doctor this evening after being bitten by a tick. It left a really nasty bite mark and he felt tired and weak along with a sore throat. No bull's eye rash, but the doctor put him on 15 days of antibiotics just in case of Lyme Desease. Sure hope he doesn't have that. Considering we live in the woods, we really don't see very many ticks.

Joshua's also on antibiotics for an ear abscess, that suddenly came up, and I will be going in the hospital on Thursday to get a kidney stone zapped!

Maybe we'll all be in fine fettle for Christmas.

We treated the cats for fleas tonight. The drops are supposed to go between the  shoulder blades, but Dexter was squirming so much that some of the medicine got on his fur where he could lick it.  Yikes! That's not good. We had to come up with a way to prevent his licking at it.  Here he is in his little catsuit. The leg off a pair of old stirrup leggings ( you can see the stirrup at the back of his neck.) I cut little arm holes in the under side. I'll cut that stirrup off before we go to bed so there's no chance of him getting hung up on something during the night.

He's coping with this undignified contraption amazingly well, for a cat.